


A Pastime

by Poose



Series: The Reynolds Affair [2]
Category: American Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Cheating, Children, F/M, Money, Multiple Orgasms, New York City, Recreational Drug Use, Rough Sex, Slut Shaming Alexander Hamilton, Summer, Writers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 06:01:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6458725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poose/pseuds/Poose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6436462">Up and Gone</a></p><p>Modern AU, Alexander and Maria, Alex POV. To reiterate, if you are bothered by infidelity, then this is <span class="u">not the fic for you.</span> Also it hurts like hell and I'm sorry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pastime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [triedunture](https://archiveofourown.org/users/triedunture/gifts).



One month into this endeavor and he's come up with a set of increasingly arbitrary restrictions that he’d imposed, on himself, in sequence -- as if by keeping his clothes on, by not kissing her, and then by not letting her go down on him, and then not taking her underwear off, and then, only having sex from behind -- like that made it better, and somehow, not fucking cheating.

They’re in his kitchen; sometimes they don’t even make it out of the kitchen, but right now they’re leaning against the counter, beers open but untouched next to them, making out, her arms around his neck. Her shoulders are bare; her skin is plush, smooth, under his hands. She has one side of her hair pulled back, a red sundress on, mascara smeared under her eyes from the heat.

They pull apart to breathe. Alex reaches for his beer, spots the C-Town gift card he’s been using as a coaster. “Hey,” he says, like it’s just occurred to him. “Do you want this?” He holds it out, the amount written plainly on the back in Sharpie. Thirty-five bucks: not a lot, but enough that the lie makes sense. He hands it to her. She looks at it, her lips pursed.

“A client gave it to me,” he lies, because she doesn’t know enough about him to spot it for a falsehood. It’s not like they talk. They smoke on his balcony, and put on records, and make out on the couch. It’s so nice. Uncomplicated. _Easy_. 

She waves it in the air, smacks the paper against her hand like she’s considering it. “You’re sure?” she asks.

He shakes his head yes, “Trust me, I won’t use it. I only eat takeout when - when I’m on my own.”

“Right,” she says, because that’s another one of the many things she doesn’t really know about him. A hesitant pause. “I mean, if you really won’t use it.”

“Totally,” Alex says, and then he puts a finger under her chin and lifts it up to kiss her again, slow and sweet. She tastes like hops and vanilla-scented lipstick that makes his own mouth feel waxy when he finally pulls away.

He glances in the direction of the living room. “Go pick us out something,” he says, and she, impulsively, kisses him on the cheek. He’s not what you’d call tall, but she has to go up on tiptoes to do it. From within his chest, his pulse flutters.

“You’re sweet, anyone ever tell you that?” she says, still elevated so they’re almost eye to eye. It’s nice to look at her. Probably because she looks at him like he's nice, which he is. He’s a good guy. A modern co-parent, working from home, and the perk (if you can call it a perk) is that his wife leaves him the house when he’s on deadline. It’s great, she’s great, but goddamn it’s fucking lonely. There is a reason he eats all that takeout, because there’s days when the delivery guy is the only human person he sees, other than during his Skype calls with Eliza.

 

###

 

“Hey, hey,” he says when she answers, then adjusts the screen so it's framing her face. She’s pulling her hair back into a neat half ponytail, smoothing the top with a boar-bristle brush.

“Hey yourself,” she smiles. She hunts around for her earrings. “How’s everything?”

“It’s okay,” he says, “I’m pretty close to my target word count for today, but George just offered me a think piece on the legacy of Phife Dawg. I don't know. It’s got a pretty tight turnaround.”

“Focus on the book,” Eliza says, firmly. “That’s the endgame. Madison will tell you the same thing.”

“He’s just anxious to have it into production for Christmas sales.” He watches her fasten a pair of pearls into her earlobes.

“You going out?” he asks.

Eliza acknowledges the question with a fractional nod. “Mother wants to take us to lunch after Philip’s swimming lesson.”

“Oh no,” he says, “that means…”

“The club,” she says, with a frown. “And of course I have a call in to the Seattle office at four-thirty east coast time, which means I’m going to have to beg to leave. It’ll take two hours, minimum.”

His phone buzzes on the table beside him. He resists the temptation to pick it up, focuses on her; her perfect skin, her beautiful hair, her flawless nails. They’ve been married for six years, together for eight, and to this day Alex cannot come to terms with the fact that this woman has chosen to be with _him_ , of all people, when she could clearly do so much better.

“Take two cars,” he tells her. “And if she’s being impossible just tell her you have to be back to talk to me.”

“She’ll be upset,” Eliza says, but he can tell by the furrow between her eyebrows that she’s considering it. “And I'll have to keep an eye on her drinking.”

Again, the phone buzzes. At that precise moment, Philip runs into the frame, waves.

“Hi, Daddy!” he says, bouncing with energy, and Alex says, “Hey, champ, what’ve you been up to?”

He lets Philip tell him at length about his swim lessons, and a frog that he and Angelica found but that Grandmamma wouldn’t let them bring into the house, and the important news that the baby has also been going to the pool.

“He has to wear floaties,” Philip says with a sneer.

“So did you,” Alex reminds his son, “when you were a baby Mommy took you swimming just like she does with Alexander now." 

Eliza is using the webcam as a mirror to finish her makeup. Philip insists that he never wore floaties, that he is basically part fish, and speaking of, could he get a fish when he came home? One of the other boys at swim camp has a fish. A third buzz. He presses the button, glances down.

_Hey_

_Just getting off work._

_I’m around._

“Alexander,” Eliza says, reprimand in her tone.

“It’s George,” he lies. “Sorry.”

“Look, tell him you’re not taking it, okay? You have enough on your plate without a looming deadline.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, “You’re right. The advance is enough if we’re careful.”

Philip interrupts the money talk to tell him that fish live in the ocean but also in tanks, and sometimes in lakes. They might go to the lake on the weekend, on Grandpa's boat, if it is sunny. 

“That’s great, Philip,” he says, and slides the phone into his lap. He texts her without looking down. It’s a skill, one of like, three that he has in his back pocket. He rocks at texting blind, identifying songs in their first couple of bars, and making beautiful women fall for him.

 _Come over,_ he writes. _I’m home._ She writes back immediately. 

_Be there in a sec_

He promises Philip that he'll consider the fish question at a later date, blows Eliza a kiss, and lowers the lid of his laptop.

 

###

 

“It’s me,” she says, through the intercom, and he buzzes her in. He should really be more careful getting her into the building, but it’s a summer Friday. Everyone’s cut out early, trying to make it out to the Hamptons or upstate, leaving behind only the tourists, the desperate, and those on a deadline.

“It’s so hot,” she says, from the doorway, and lifts her hair off her neck, fans her face with her other hand. He leans against the frame so he can watch her. Alex thinks to say, well, _wear your hair up, then_ , but he knows it wouldn't help. It’s too hot for thinking, too hot to breathe. Even if she shaved her head, it wouldn’t change the oppressiveness of a Harlem summer. Every fucking day is like this. He can’t eat, can't sleep -- no wife, no kids, it should be perfect, but it's hot, and lonely, and he's restless. Besides, he likes her hair, a messy tangle of curls that smell like apple shampoo, and which move with her as she walks confidently into his kitchen.

That’s how he’s managed this elaborate justification, that somehow, he doesn’t quite entirely know how, that this is Eliza’s fault, for leaving him alone in the apartment, and with her gone, and no one to satisfy, how the hell is he supposed to sleep?

He watches her fan her face.

She catches him looking. “What?” she says.

“You’re really pretty,” he says, “just, I just wanted to say that, sorry.”

Her gaze drops to her hands. He feels terrible and can’t pinpoint a reason why.

 

###

 

So they're making out again, this time in his dining nook. She's put on a Fugees album, which is practically oldies for her.  

He sweeps the pile of mail to the side, presses her face down against the wood of the dining table.

“Okay?” he asks, his warm breath against the back of her neck. He asks because even though it’s obvious that she likes this, a couple of times she’s gotten spooked, like a horse, and that was fine, they’d backed off, or listened to a record and split a spliff, and either tried again if she wanted to, or ordered takeout if she didn’t. She only ever ate a little bit of hers, but she would steal his fries, bites from a sandwich, and take the rest of the food home.

“It’s good,” she says, arching her back when he runs a hand along her spine, “I’m good, all right?”

“Hm,” Alex says, and brushes her hair away from her neck. He lays kisses on her there, then between her shoulder blades. He slides down the straps of her dress, kisses where they’d been, and then covers them back up. Her nails dig into her palms.

“You are so fucking sexy,” Alex says, and stands up. His hands snake up her thighs, beneath the flimsy fabric of her dress, and she whimpers. He stops, lets her settle, and then gently folds the hem of it up and tucks it around the front of her. She swears under her breath as he pulls her underwear down so that they frame her ass, a tightly stretched scrap of cheap white lace that looks like it might unravel at any moment. Sometimes she won’t even wear underwear when she comes over. His tongue feels too big for his mouth.

He admires her for a moment, strokes lightly over each of her ass cheeks, and then finds his way to his knees, to the floor. He eats her ass until she growls, and then he eats her pussy until she comes twice, legs shaking, and his spit and her fluid soak the insides of her thighs. When he finally stands up, tongue numb, she’s trembling.

Alex wastes no time. He kicks off his jeans, yanks the t-shirt off over his head, and shoves down his boxers. The lace of her panties scratches him as he fucks yet another orgasm out of her, and this time she’s so loud that he has to clamp a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming.

“Shhh, baby,” he says, grinding into her even deeper. “Shhh, don't be like that. I have neighbors.”

She bites his hand and he snaps, “Goddamn it, what the fuck was that?” She bites down again, and he smacks her ass with his free hand, yanks an arm behind her back and says, “It’s like that, then?”

A hysterical laugh from her is the only response, so he focuses everything on making her come, again, adjusts them both so that her legs are pressed tightly together, and runs his dick back and forth outside of her cunt until his pubes are tacky, sticky. She claws at the table, leaves tiny moons in the varnish with her acrylic nails and makes a guttural noise like she’s being choked.

She’s shaking when he at last asks, voice quiet, “You done?”

“Yeah,” she answers, and props herself up on her elbows so he can finish. He watches her ass jiggle while he fucks her, wishes he could take a picture of how fucking hot it is. His memory will have to serve instead.

They hang out for a little while after that, smoke a few cigarettes on the balcony before she says she has to get back home. Alex walks her to the door, and they share a kiss there, too.

“Bye,” he says, and she looks back at him with bright eyes, unfocused. “Bye,” she says. “Oh, hey, I work nights all next week.”

“Good to know,” Alex says. “I’ll be,” and he looks around the apartment, which is a goddamn pigsty, “I’ll be here.”

“Don’t work too much,” she says, and flashes him a smile that’s almost shy. It’s the girlish quality she has that confuses him. He wants to fuck her until she screams, and he wants to save her at the same time. He doesn’t know what from; the world, maybe?

“Yes ma’am,” he says, and shuts the door as she leaves. Once she’s gone he opens the fridge and stares at its pitiful contents. He’s about to dial the number of the Jamaican place up the street - great patties, cash only, open only if the owner wasn’t visiting his family in Kingston - when he remembers George’s offer from before. He rereads the text that he sent.

_Tiny project. 5000 words on the legacy of Phife Dawg. 200 flat fee. Wed deadline. LMK by 5 if you want_

He calls the Jamaican place: no answer. Seamless it is, then. While he waits for his chicken and rice to arrive, he texts George back.

_Sure thing, send it over._


End file.
